A slam of the door announced the departure and the temper of Recriminator, and it also brought upon his feet another deputy who had kept hitherto quite in the background.  He evidently was anxious for a private audience, but that being impossible, he whispered in my ear, “Sir, I am an abolitionist, slick straight off; and all I have got to say is, that you are a soap-suddy, milk-and-water friend to the slave, fix it how you will.”  Seeing he was impatient to be off, I whispered to him in reply, “Sir, there is an old prayer that has often been uttered with great sincerity, and is probably being so uttered now by more than one intelligent slave:  it is this, ‘Good Lord, save me from my friends.’  The exertions of your party, sir, remind me much of those of a man who went to pull a friend out of the mud, but, by a zeal without discretion, he jumped on his friend’s head, and stuck him faster than ever.”

When he disappeared, I was in hopes it was all over; but a very mild-tempered looking man, with a broad intelligent forehead, got up, and, approaching me in the most friendly manner, said, “Sir, I both admit and deplore the evil of the institution you have been discussing, but its stupendous difficulties require a much longer residence than yours has been to fathom them; and until they are fully fathomed, the remedies proposed must be in many cases very unsuitable, uncalled for, and insufficient.  However, sir, I accept your remarks in the same friendly spirit as, I am sure, you have offered them.  Permit me, at the same time, as one many years your senior, to say that, in considering your proposals, I shall separate the chaff—­of which there is a good deal—­from the wheat—­of which there is some little; the latter I shall gather into my mind’s garner, and I trust it will fall on good soil.”  I took the old gentleman’s hand and shook it warmly, and, as he retired, I made up my mind he was the sensible slave-owner.

I was about to leave the scene, quite delighted that the ordeal was over, when, to my horror, I heard a strong Northern voice calling out lustily, “Stranger, I guess I have a word for you.”  On turning round I beheld a man with a keen Hebrew eye, an Alleghany ridge nose, and a chin like the rounded half of a French roll.  I was evidently alone with a ’cute man of dollars and cents.  On my fronting him, he said, with Spartan brevity, “Who’s to pay?” Conceive, O reader! my consternation at being called upon to explain who was to make compensation for the sweeping away—­to a considerable extent, at all events—­of what represented, in human flesh, 250,000,000l., and in the produce of its labour 80,000,000l. annually!